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Mailbag: “Tree Tactics 101″ from Bigtoy of Cho’gall
Published on December 10, 2007 by Phaelia 
Mailbag 
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While Lifebloom remains one of the most powerful spells at a Druid's disposal, its regimented timing causes many players to complain that they find Tree of Life healing mind-numbingly boring. While other healers need only watch health bars, a Tree has to also watch — and allocate screen real estate to — HoT timers (the nerf to trinketed Lifebloom will at least have the benefit of making the loss of a Lifebloom stack less grievous). However, effective utilization of the other spells in a Tree's repertoire (Rejuvenation, Regrowth, and Swiftmend) can help make fights less monotonous by increasing the amount of decision-making necessary to succeed. Reader Bigtoy of Cho'gall (US) generously sent in the following tips for leveraging Tree of Life and its respective spells under different raid conditions:
Tree Tactics In order to be effective, Lifebloom needs to be renewed every six seconds. This means that a Tree can cast three spells from the first Lifebloom to when they need to renew the Lifebloom again. Depending on the situation various patterns are more useful or less useful. Here's a rundown of some of the basic templates you'll run into.
Multiple Tanks (FLK, most 25-man trash pulls) Cast Cycle: LB Tank A, LB Tank B, LB Tank C, LB Tank D. Stack Lifebloom on every tank and keep them rolling and triple-stacked. Could not be more boring or more effective.
Two Simultaneous Tanks (Crystalcore Devestators in TK, 10-man trash) Cast Cycle: LB Tank A, LB Tank B, Rejuv Tank [A or B], Free GCD Keep Lifebloom and Rejuvenation on both tanks. There should be one GCD cooldown available in the cycle that should be reserved for aggressive use of Swiftmend (when possible) or NS/HT (if necessary) without letting the Lifebloom stacks fall off. Note that keeping Rejuvenation up can be swapped out for healing the raid in a 10-man setting.
Save the AoE! (casters during Murlocs, Solarian adds in phase 2, non-elite trash packs) Cast Cycle: Rejuv Caster A, Rejuv Caster B, Rejuv Caster C, etc. This is an exercise in the power of Swiftmend. When the AoE is about to begin, start throwing Rejuvenation on all potential aggro targets (Mages/Warlocks). Usually one of them pulls ahead, pulls aggro and needs healing fast. Swiftmend the Rejuvenation to provide instant healing and a chance for the FoL/LHW/FH to land.
Single Tank Support/Raid Heal (10-man instances, Akil'Zon) Cast Cycle: LB Tank, [Rejuv Tank or Insect Swarm Boss], [Rejuv or LB DPS/Healer] x2 In 10-man instances, the best use of a Tree is to support the main tank with a triple Lifebloom stack and heal the raid. Rejuvenation and Insect Swarm (if the tank wants it, not all do depending on rage needs); both have 12-second durations, which means that alternating them after the renewing Lifebloom means they will always be up. Two GCDs remain in the cycle, which are best used healing the raid. Lifebloom is easily the most efficient topping spell, especially in a 10-man setting where it is less likely to be healed over. But generally I like to use Rejuvenation as it heals for more and allows for a Swiftmend emergency if something goes awry.
Note that this is also what I do on single tank fights in 25-man content. Raid healing is a lot weaker in 25-mans since Chain Heal/Paladins will usually overwrite your HoTs, but a Rejuvenation never hurts and during frantic periods (ex. Vashj, Morogrim phase 2) it provides valuable insurance.
Alternating Tanks (Hydross, Nalorakk, VR) Cast Cycle: Icky Easily our worst situation as trees, as we're given two bad choices. Either we waste mana and GCDs keeping Lifebloom on both tanks all the time, or we ramp up Lifebloom on the switch where we spent 5 seconds doing crappy healing when healing is needed most. The first rule is to first get Rejuvenation up before Lifebloom, so you can Swiftmend if something goes wrong. The second rule is to look at the fight/raid. Is it a 10-man raid where you are responsible for raid healing? Is it a 25-man raid with lots of support? Are the transfers unpredictable? Get a feel for the fight and the raid composition and figure it out. All else being equal, you cannot go wrong keeping Rejuvenation on all possible tank targets, and cycling Lifebloom on the newest target.
General Tree Tips:
Regarding Regrowth With 2/5 Tier 5 and Improved Regrowth talent, it's actually not that bad of a spell to use efficiency-wise, though it will never be a bread and butter spell. Don't be afraid to put it on a single tank fight and let it tick for 27 seconds. It's also a better choice to use as a fast raid heal in 10-man raids than Rejuvenation/Swiftmend, though due to the VERY long HoT period it's best used where there is recurring damage (ex. Eagle boss in Zul'Aman).
Grave Healing Druids make shockingly good grave healers on Morogrim. If they come in topped off, hit each graved individual with a single Lifebloom and Rejuvenation, they'll be topped off by the time they make it back up. If they come in hurt, blow Nature's Swiftness first, Regrowth second, and Rejuvenation/Swiftmend third. Also sometimes you can try and cheat over to help heal the AoE, though be careful that a grave doesn't catch you way out of position.
Zul'jin Healing Regrowth is the ONLY spell you should use during Eagle phase: good cast time and strong total heal while allowing for Swiftmend. Scatter Rejuvenation during the Dragonhawk phase to Swiftmend spike damage from Holy Fire. For Lynx phase the best usage is Regrowth/Swiftmend during the burst damage (for a two second, 5k heal).
As a member of a guild just beginning our progress into Zul'Aman and SSC (we downed Lurker for the first time last week), I'm sure that I will benefit from this advice. As I believe that many readers are in a similar place progression-wise, I hope that some of you will, too! Have any additional raid-specific tips you'd like to share? Please feel free to comment.
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Those tactics are why i love playing a tree. Why is it that people keep saying resto druids are boring? pally healers allways looked like the most boring healers in my opinion. FoL, FoL and once in a blue moon a regular light. How fun is that? We trees, to be good healers have to implement those healing strategys and lifebloom rotations that change during each given pull or boss. We have to watch multiple (up to 4) tanks with lifeblooms, if less then keep lifebloom up while keeping an eye on the rest of the raid for a quick lifebloom between rolls for someone who took a little more damage that chain heal woulden’t completley cover. The best perk thouge that makes tree never boring is being able to jump around and dance WHILE im healing (my guild has said that one of the highlights of raid nights is watching me jump up and down for no apparent reason ^_^). Dose anyone else have this jumping addiction too or dose it just come from being a die hard gnome for so long?
Being able to judge at a moments notice when not to use lifebloom is one of the greatest skills a tree druid needs. Ive noticed people ether use the other spells too much where lifebloom would suffice or use lifebloom too much (i admit i use it too much on occasion >.<) This skill is allmost an artform, being able to judge in a split second like this. puting up rejuv in anticipation of a soon to come swiftmend is a incredably powerfull tactic. Even puting rejuv/swiftmend up in quick sucsesion can be a real life savor (in this sense we DO have a 1.5 second cast heal that has a 15 second CD ^_^).
@Zackoria: LOL! I jump after almost every HoT I cast too! I started doing it for fun and now it’s a weird habit I can’t get rid of.
@Phae: I’ll note those ZA tips, I’m sure I’ll give them good use (I haven’t been there yet due to some raiding schedule issues, but hope to fix that soon).
Congratulations on Lurker, by the way; in my guild we happened to have sushi for the first time last week too! (I’m the bird-headed druid to the left http://endless-wow.com/images/kills/WoWScrnShot_120707_231516.jpg)
About healing tips, I can’t say I’ve progressed far enough to give advice but there are some things I’ve found useful in Gruul, other than the obvious one of synchronizing the HoTs on the tank just before reverberations to avoid silence.
Before everyone flies and gets shatter damage I cast regrowth on the main tank. In case I’m not in range just after shatter, at least he has a nice HoT I can swiftmend on the run if needed as soon as I get close enough in order to re-stack other HoTs. 27 seconds give more than enough margin.
Also lifebloom goes great during shatter as you can throw it on yourself and another targer or two and most of the healing is done just after taking damage, where rejuvenation would be wasted. Although if people are doing things right they shouldn’t take much damage from shatter
Thanks for the post, Phae and also to Bigtoy for the tips. I’m gonna be hanging up my Earthwarden for a bit to help out with the lack of healers so my Tree skills are a little rusty…a lot rusty, actually…I think its been since like last April o.O
This was great. I’ve been out of practice tree healing (I’m currently Moonkin spec’d) but hope to get back into it soon. We also have some other tree druids in our guild so I made sure to link this article on our forum.
The advice is all very sound!
Tree healing can get especially boring in places that end up with a lot of the multiple tanks tactic for healing. The more you have to make decisions, and react to situations, the less boring healing becomes. Even hitting different spells in rotation breaks up the monotony. But if you spend prolonged amounts of time healing multiple tanks, where all you do is keeping 3-4 Lifeblooms up, it’s ZZzz time. The difference for trees, versus Chain Healing Shaman, or Flash of Lighting Pallies is that they generally have more dynamic targetting, and cast on more dynamic targets, either prempting or reacting to damage. Trees follow a set schedule, and on multi-tanks roll hots on targets largely unaffected by situations.
Mt. Hyjal trash, here’s looking at you.
It’s also worth noting that keeping 4 3-stacks of lifebloom up is not easy, or possible for all players, depending on latency.
4 GCDs from casting 4 lifeblooms is 6 seconds. You have 6.99… etc. to get a lifebloom back up on your first target. The closer you are to a 250ms ping, the more difficult it will be to cast 4 times, and return to the start of the cycle on time. Over 250ms, and it’s not possible.
A lot of times, I’ve found the visual indication of my GCD being up (The flash of the button becoming available again) is too late to roll 4 stacks. You have to either develop your own internal sense of timing when to hit the spell before it is “ready” or you need to spam the button a bit. However, rolling 4 stacks of lifeblooms on 4 tanks is INCREDIBLY effective healing. And in situations like Hyjal where tanks aren’t taking huge amounts of damage, I can (and have, when things went bad) solo-heal our trash tanks, leaving the rest of our healers free for the raid.
An incredibly useful time-saver trees can use is the mouseover macro:
#show Lifebloom
/cast [target=mouseover] Lifebloom
Is all you need, but saves you from having to click on targets to cast your next heal; all you have to do is hover over then. And when dealing with a quarter-second of leeway every time you cast, saving the time it takes to click someone matters.
LB absolutely kills on Hyjal trash (rolling on 3/4 tanks). At the end of a clear I usually have ~1 million more effective healing than the next healer. Doesn’t mean anything really, and I’m not even that great a healer, but it’s still kind of neat. I prefer to raid heal with LB rather than rejuv/regrowth. It’s faster HPS than rejuv/less mana than regrowth and with the bloom it heals for 3300ish. I guess the only downside is you don’t get credit for the bloom, but who cares really?
Thanks to Phae for posting me, hey I’m published.
Any thoughts on the general strategies themselves, or the syntax laying it out? Upon re-reading it, I think I should have organized it “3-4 tanks” “2 tanks” “1 tank” since that’s probably more straight forward. Anyone have any critiques of the base line tree tactics?
Also regarding ping, I can keep up 4 lifeblooms at 230ish ping pretty easily, but it’s true that it’s tough and if I hesitate, they cascade off pretty quickly.
Zul’jin Healing:
Eagle Phase, you should 3 stack lifebloom yourself, then you can use the other 3 GCDs to cast 1 lifebloom on other raid members that need healing. Use the 4th to refresh your own, you’ll never die even if you get hit by all 4 tornados at once + a lightining bolt. And you’ll have very effective healing on the rest of the raid since you are using the entirety of the spell, ticks + bloom.
@Zackoria: I think that some people think Druids are boring to play because of the timing we have to manage and the fact that we generally are encouraged to focus on the same subset of raidmates (generally the tanks). Of course, I don’t necessarily just do that, and I’m sure you don’t either. Lifeblooms are great for throwing around during spare GCDs. I have just got to try your jumping bean approach to Lifebloom healing, though! Fortunately, I have jump bound to my Nostromo gamepad. =)
@Ermengol: Thank you for the congratulations, and right back at you! It sound like several guilds downed Lurker last week (Doomilias’ included). Your boss kill picture is gorgeous. Someone must have an amazing video card. Thanks for the additional tips for Gruul. While we consider him to be on farm now, there’s ALWAYS room for improvement, and I like your idea about Regrowth. I have been using the LB on myself just before getting turned to stone after another reader recommended it to me. That’s made a big difference since I no longer have to bother with healing myself after a shatter.
@Aiuriun: Grats (?) on your upcoming respec. May you enjoy healing as much as I do!
@Nasirah: Thank you for sharing it with your guildmates. Bigtoy was very kind in sending it to me to post! I’m glad so many people are finding value in it.
@Kaera: I wasn’t aware that Chain Heal had such dynamic targetting. Looking at the healing numbers put up by shaman guildmates, it’s pretty much 100% Chain Heal so I tend to give him a hard time about not being especially creative. ^_^ Maybe I won’t do that so much. Nah … a little ribbing among healers never hurt anyone. =) You make a great point about latency. I myself can’t even fathom what it would be like to try to maintain stacks of LB on 4 tanks; I still struggle with three (maybe because I have a hard time ignoring everyone else who gets into trouble). And I didn’t know about the visual indicator of the GCD could be “off” so thanks for that handy tip.
@Lemo: O.o Actually, I *believe* that Recount may be crediting me for the Bloom of my Lifebloom. Or maybe it was WWS. It seemed like I was getting credit, but I may be mistaken.
@Bigtoy: You are, of course, very welcome. Thank you for sharing your advice with everyone. If you want to make any changes, just let me know.
@Edelia: I will keep that in mind for when my guild begins attempting the Eagle boss (we’ve only killed Bear and Lynx so far). Thank you!
Oops, I meant for the Eagle phase of Zul’jin. Not for the Eagle boss himself
Hehe, it must be mass lurker kill week. One shot of our second lurker kill this last sunday. ^_^
I believe Edelia is talking about the Zul’jin fight when he turns into one of the animal bosses. From what i read of him he transforms into each animal boss as a phase of the fight. I only know from what ive read, but were getting close! (Finally got down dragonhawk last night. BTW i don’t envy anyone starting to learn that fight >.<) The eagle boss himself is pretty simple healing wise. I just automaticly start giving out lifeblooms to anyone who’s xperl border lights up red. Xperl borders are really helpfull for getting those lifeblooms out to the raid faster.
Just try and keep everyone above 50% health for the fight since people can have a chance to get roflpwned(the bird adds from the sky target people with lower health like Aran). The key to eagle boss is just having the raid be able to stay spread out and collapse immedietly (dont have EVERYONE collapse right before he lighting storms cause it can be off and he often lighting shocks right before, just have the raid start edgeing closer to each other).
Edit: dang Edelia your fast =P
@Edelia: That’s a really clever idea keeping the triple-lifebloom on yourself to heal the casting spell damage. I’ll have to try that.
On Zuljin fight eagle phase, stack 3 times LB on yourself and keep it stacked, then you can Heal almost at much as you want
I’ve been using BigToy’s tactics for weeks, both for my own healing and for making healing assignments, and it’s really working for me. The one thing that I would add is that the challenge of keeping up multiple stacks of lifebloom is being fast enough to change targets. What I do is make a macro for each of my tanks:
/target Tank1
/cast Lifebloom
Very simple, very effective, lets me instantly switch between them. The only drawback is editing the macros and memorizing who the symbols represent on the spot. Since I had eleven free toolbar spaces I also made one for myself and one for some of the dps–I keep one for each of the squishies if possible. In 10 man, I’ll have a macro to target everyone. This works for me because keyboard shortcuts on my laptop seem to impede my ability to move around. I’d like to know what other druids do to make themselves faster! I’m always racing the global cooldown.
@Sydera: I’m so glad that Bigtoy’s recommendations have been helpful to you and happy I thought to add it to the “Guides” section despite not being something I can claim (I decided the content was just too good and detailed to omit).
I’ve seen the multiple tank macros before and tried them myself. But having to change my macros and rememorize which key corresponded to which person got me in the end. I use mouseover healing and a Nostromo game pad in conjunction with the Grid UI addon and a special layout that lets me group raid members by role (tanks, melee DPS, ranged DPS, and healers). That way all the tanks I would need to roll LB on are in about an inch of screen real estate from one another along with ticking timers below their names. Hmmm .. this might make a good blog post! /jots idea down